Wait a second...this isn't a year long vacation???

When I signed up for this year abroad thing, I did not know that school was included in the package. It was an extra bonus! Sadly it’s really detrimental to my year long vacation. However, I have to endure the pain. So…time to talk about school! Yipee.

(Note: contrary to popular belief…not all study abroad programs are easy. Thank you BCSP for actually making me study, do homework work and get really stressed out.)

The best part about school here is that it’s all in Italian! Unfortunately, I DON’T SPEAK ITALIAN. This is quite an obstacle. Just kidding, I can speak it…it just means it’s easier to zone out than classes in English. Oh mio Dio.

Anyways, right now I’m taking 3 classes (equivalent to 12 credits.) I took a 3-credit class in September. It was half grammar and half history. The grammar part was easy; the history part was awful. Aside from the fact that I HATE history, I did not enjoy the class because the professor was lame and made loser jokes. So, immediately my attention was drawn to how high he wore his pants, how tight he wore his tie and how see-through his shirt was. We can just say that because of this, I did not do well on the final. (I still got an A!)

Anyways, out of the 3 classes that I’m taking right now, 2 of them are at our program’s office. So they are all with American students, but Italian teachers. My Italian language class has about 15 students in it and my Cinema class only has 9. They are both conducted in Italian. If you even speak one word of English they whip you with a flail (Bologna is a medieval city. And that’s what Italians do. Gruesome, I know.)

The grammar class has been really helpful. We read newspaper articles a lot, which teaches us about Italian culture, as well as teaches us idiomatic expressions and phrases used in daily speech. Then we focus on finding synonyms and antonyms of these words (if you are trying to learn a language do this! It’s very helpful!). We are pretty much all at a level where we just need to be adding to our vocabulary, but it’s pretty obvious we all still need grammar practice. Our professor loves to ask us to explain how things are done in the states. What I’ve learned is there is no way to generalize American life-styles like you can Italian ones. Everything DIPENDE (depends) on where you go and where you are from. Let’s just say many arguments ensue and my teacher thinks we are all wild savages that don’t actually live in the same country because everyone contradicts one another. My role in these arguments is usually to sit there with my mouth open, rolling my eyes at the stupid things people say about our country. Just kidding no one ever says anything stupid. We all use the phrase “Charlie down!”

My cinema class is okay. I can only take so many 3 hour black and white films with no plot or explosions or like…color. Although some of the articles that we read are in English, that’s cool. Here is a little exerpt:

“Bakhtin pits decentralizing energies (speech, carnival) against a hegemonic project of centralization (officialdom, the language system). In both cases what was thought to be marginal (popular festivities, vulgar speech) is brought to the center of discussion. Bakhtin’s valorization of the anarchizing vitality of parole against the ossified rigidities of langue, in this sense, is isomorphic with his predilection for the subversive force of carnival as opposed to the suffocating decorum of official life and style.”

WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN. I don’t speak English, I speak American.

And that’s pretty much all I have to say about that class.

And then we get to my most interesting class so far. Not. My 6 credit “Letteratura Italiana” with Professore Battistini. This class is at the University of Bologna. So all in Italian and all with Italian students.

First of all, the class started on October 5^th instead of September 27^th because the professor was sick. Beautiful. Next, the lecture hall seats about 150 students, yet about 200 are enrolled in the class. I’ve found it to be really fun to trample fellow classmates while trying to get a seat.

Then, my lovely professor strolls in about 22 minutes late…every day. Unfortunately, there is no rule here that you can leave after 10 minutes of waiting without the professor. That is why Madison is awesome. Actually, today Battistini was early! He came only 15 minutes late. I didn’t know what to do, I felt so unprepared without those 7 extra minutes of twiddling my thumbs. Why don’t I just come at 11:22 you ask? Answer: I’d rather not have to sit on the windowsill or on the lap of a classmate. That’s usually the only spot open after “The Storm of the Classroom” which happens at precisely 11:00.

Then the professor begins his beautiful lecture. Monotone voice; pacing back and forth; no jokes; no structure; in Italian. I clearly pay attention a lot.

After about 2 hours of his psycho-babble: my brain is fried and I look at my notes à I’ve caught down about a page full of his ramble but luckily I catch the jist of every lesson. I look over at every other Italian student who have each individually written every singly word that left Battistini’s mouth…I’m sure they even leave extra big spaces for the breaths he took. (One girl writes at least 10 pages of notes every day. Front and back.) This is when I feel really foreign. This is when I feel like I’m going to fail the class.

Like I said before, there is no structure to his lectures. It’s hard for us American students to adjust to this. We come from a world of PowerPoint’s and worksheets. They don’t exist here. Here my grade will consist of a 12-page paper on a book of our choice (off of a list of about 30). Then we have to read The Inferno (Dante), The Decameron (Boccaccio), Zeno’s Conscience (Svevo), Sensilità (Svevo) and The Prince (Macchiavelli). Culminated by a 15 to 30-minute oral exam in which the professor is free to ask you anything about what we’ve done in class or on the books you’ve read. Sound fun? I’m so excited. I love failing.

Pray for me,

Mals

Battistini is a crowd pleaser.
Everyone really enjoys this class.

My professor. Yes, I am the weird foreigner that takes pictures during class. (you've all seen them in lectures at home)

P.S. Today the professor began the class with “Luckily the lock on this classroom door is locked. The rest of the Faculty is on strike this week and they have locked all the other classroom doors so no classes can proceed. Aren’t we lucky! Let’s begin…”